Germans Los Angeles

A hearing will be held later this month to decide whether two East German tourists arrested Tuesday in a protest outside the Century Plaza will face misdemeanor charges of failing to disperse. The two tourists, Susan Conradt and Arne Frischmuth, said they showed up at the Century City demonstration to get a firsthand look at an American political protest. They were arrested along with eight protesters who demonstrated outside the hotel while President Bush was inside speaking at a fund-raiser.

A hearing will be held later this month to decide whether two East German tourists arrested Tuesday in a protest outside the Century Plaza will face misdemeanor charges of failing to disperse. The two tourists, Susan Conradt and Arne Frischmuth, said they showed up at the Century City demonstration to get a firsthand look at an American political protest. They were arrested along with eight protesters who demonstrated outside the hotel while President Bush was inside speaking at a fund-raiser.

For 30 minutes on Wednesday there was order amid the sonic chaos of chattering jackhammers, rap-blasting boom boxes and braying lunatics. Then the last of the monthly lunch-hour organ concerts at the First German United Methodist Church in downtown Los Angeles ended, and the din of a growing city came crashing back in.

For 30 minutes on Wednesday there was order amid the sonic chaos of chattering jackhammers, rap-blasting boom boxes and braying lunatics. Then the last of the monthly lunch-hour organ concerts at the First German United Methodist Church in downtown Los Angeles ended, and the din of a growing city came crashing back in.

At one time, Los Angeles was Weimar on the Pacific: Numerous German-speaking émigrés put their stamp on the city to which they'd fled. What with directors such as Billy Wilder and Ernst Lubitsch, writers such as Thomas Mann and Bertolt Brecht, and assorted film composers and actors — many of whom gathered to express their love of German high culture and their hatred of fascism — it seemed at times that the Southland's intellectual life...